i'll be waiting for you, baby, 'cause i'm through
by piratesmiley
Summary: "In total, he had two deep gashes in his torso, and seven in various places along his arms; a very large bruise on his right thigh that Pepper refused to check and see how far it went up, a few broken ribs judging by his posture; and, in her best, completely unprofessional medical opinion, a concussion. Because he almost always had a concussion." Pepperony.


A/N: Cross-posted to AO3. Title comes from "You Only Live Once" by The Strokes.

* * *

It was one of those rare nights when Tony had actually convinced Pepper to drink with them. It had been a long week, but when was it _not_. The drinking itself was tame, though, more of a de-stress than a Tony Stark Rager; it was barely 9 PM and he, Pepper, and Rhodey were piled on Tony's bed not-watching a movie, drinking wine for a while and then whatever was in the minibar, and it was technically a very nice and appropriate night.

Pepper passed out pretty early on though (justified, as she was basically constantly working). She hadn't said she was tired but he knew (somehow he knew) that wine made her sleepy; and so he'd expected (and ended up with) an inebriated Pepper napping on his bed.

And he and Rhodey continued to sloppily banter over the movie and when it was late enough the Colonel dragged himself to one of the spare bedrooms (and Tony fiercely counted it as a win that Rhodey didn't comment on the sanctity of Pepper's virtue against his hyperactive libido or even quirk his eyebrows at the tenderness in Tony's face when he laid a blanket over her, he just left her there with Tony; and that said something, he thought). And even though Pepper was on top of the covers and slightly off kilter, Tony crawled up to lay next to her (at a very respectable, almost saint-like distance) and promptly passed out.

He was only out for about an hour before Jarvis woke him, a slight ping was all it took for Tony's eyes to open in Pavlovian response. He instantly looked over to Pepper, who had rolled away from him at some point but was still asleep.

"Yeah?" He croaked, quiet as he could.

"Sir, a load of Stark Industries tech has been found. I'm uploading the specs to your tablet now."

Tony grabbed the gadget off the nightstand. Yeah, he couldn't get out of this. He lifted himself off the bed gently and walked blearily downstairs to start the initiation sequences for the suit. He started a pot of coffee and slipped on the neoprene liner before jogging back up the stairs. Platypus didn't need to be woken, but Pepper had insisted. It was one of the new rules for going on "these ridiculous missions," as she put it.

"Either you call me or you program JARVIS to call me. Every time."

"Why?"

"Because, Tony, I'm in charge of keeping track of your schedule, which means I'm in charge of keeping track of _you_. So you call me. _Every time._"

"Even if I tear you away from your precious beauty sleep?"

"If you wake up, I wake up."

And he saw the deadly seriousness in her eye and nodded. "I promise." And so he told JARVIS to remind him to call her before he left and continue to harangue him until he sent her some form of communication.

This wasn't the first time, of course, that she was present when he was called away. Bad guys didn't exclusively work when the western world was asleep (this was the only thing they weren't prejudiced about, any time, day or night) but this was the first time he'd tell her he was leaving from his own bed.

And hopefully not the last time.

She was so curled up, clutching the pillow under her head, and she looked so relaxed that Tony was thrown off for a moment. He didn't want to disturb it; it was too fragile looking. But she would kill him if he didn't.

"Pep?" His hand went to her shoulder, but he just left it there, touching but not moving.

"Yeah?"

And her voice was so open and quiet and tender, he'd never heard it before like that, he'd heard every imagine iteration of annoyed or snarky or pleased or proud, the whole spectrum, and yet here was untapped territory, and as soon as that dawned on him a low moan, truncated by the gulp of his throat, left him. He'd never felt such ridiculous longing before. Not without a clear solution to make the feeling _go away_.

He was silent for a long moment, and she frowned, eyes still closed.

"I, uh," he said. Suddenly, he knelt next to her. "I have to go."

"'Kay," she murmured.

"On a mission," he continued. "In Mexico. It's not too far away, actually…and you are asleep."

"'Kay," she said again.

"Right. JARVIS, remind her, if she wakes up."

"_Certainly, sir_."

Tony stood back up, overcome with a strange feeling, a tide of unsettling warmth languishing in the darkness. He tried to shake free from it but it clung to him like sea foam, like television static. He left the room feeling tethered to it. The line never sang tight, never dared to run out; it just blindly looped around his wrist, tugging one shoulder toward home as he flew through the cool sky.

* * *

It was a simple enough mission, but it didn't come without a new set of injuries. Somehow it was still dark in Malibu by the time he returned. Tony landed clumsily in the workshop and let his eyes rest while the 'bots dismantled him. He doesn't notice her curled up on the couch watching him until it's time for the _standing motionless under the showerhead_ that counted as cleaning himself up. When he saw her, he felt a rush of disappointment. Half of him had been hoping to crawl back into the occupied bed.

She was wearing her secret glasses (she never liked them, she had explained, because she thought they made her face look funny) and an old sweatshirt and her hair was loose and mussed and slept on. When she noticed he had noticed her, she stood up and pushed up her sleeves. "Let's get you patched up," she said softly.

She, through sheer force of will, touchlessly loaded him into the elevator, herding him with her eyes. He was well enough to get there without too much stumbling. They rode up to his room silently. She left him to trail her as she beelined for the bathroom, flipping on the light and getting out the first aid. He very slowly, very gingerly removed the suit liner, leaving himself in his boxers, and eased himself onto the floor, propping himself up against the bathtub wall.

"Why do you do that?" she asked, without turning around.

"What?"

"You sit on the floor when you could sit on the ledge or on the toilet." She could not precisely pinpoint what made her ask or when this annoyance had even crossed her consciousness.

"I like making you get on the floor with me. Plus it's colder down here." And the words lacked the usual swagger that would accompany such a statement. He was just being honest. She locked eyes with him as she knelt to the ground, letting him enjoy it.

For the second time that night he suppressed a moan.

In total, he had two deep gashes in his torso, and seven in various places along his arms; a very large bruise on his right thigh that Pepper refused to check and see how far it went up, one that would make sex very, _very_ painful if he wasn't currently employing his Use Abstinence to Make Pepper Love Me plan (and who the hell could have predicted that _that_ would have been an action he would ever deliberately take); a few broken ribs judging by his posture; and, in her best, completely unprofessional, medical opinion, a concussion. Because he almost always had a concussion.

Slowly and carefully, she tended to the wounds. Sterilizing. Cleaning. Holding her breath on all the ones she had to stitch. And then bandaging. He suffered through the pain for the pleasure of her fingers traveling from the cotton of the bandage to smooth it against his skin.

Then she let him climb into the shower while she cleaned up the mess. Still in his boxers, he turned on the water and left the curtain open as the spray washed over him. She tried not to think that this was indecent and a little mean. He knew what he was doing. She turned to him when she was done fidgeting with her medical supplies and gave him a look. _No, I won't leave yet. Yes, I'm sticking around for a while. Now take your shower._

He grinned and closed the curtain. She hurried out the door before he could fling his soaked boxers over the curtain rod.

* * *

Pepper walked straight out of the bathroom to the balcony doors and pulled them open. She needed fresh air. And a clear head.

She should leave. Or wake up Rhodey, to be a witness. This wasn't just skirting the edge of dangerous. The danger was _here_, it had arrived, in the form of her own sleepiness.

She stood on the balcony, immobile with internal debate. He found her that way a few minutes later, back to him. He didn't step out onto the balcony though. That would be just a little too eerily familiar, and this time he wouldn't hesitate. He wouldn't let her hesitate. He was too sick of missed opportunity.

She turned before he could announce himself. "Better?" she asked lightly, staunching the gravity of the dead-end conclusion she was thinking about.

He nodded, so she brushed past him back into the room, walking into the closet and grabbing him a shirt to wear. He sat on the bed and let her pull it over his head. He could see how she was a little too carefully making sure that her hands didn't touch his chest on the way down.

The thing is, before Afghanistan he had always thought the boundary between them was stone, cool, basic, unyielding. Impossible. Now he thought of it as glass. He could see everything perfectly through it, even closer than before, but he somehow wasn't strong enough to smash it.

(For Pepper, it had always been smoke. She'd billow wisps of it out to him to impress mystery, to distract, to create distance where there had _never_ been any. But she couldn't manage anything more solid. And sometimes she'd look up, blinded, and realize that the smoke had only disguised him rather than protected her, and that he'd moved closer still.)

She retreated, taking a step back from where he was seated on the edge of the bed. He clenched the sheet rather than take her hand.

"Please—"

"Okay," she cut him off, agreeing too early. But her eyes said the rest. _It's late. I'm doing this for you. Don't make me regret it._

He sat very still in his place as she crawled into bed. He didn't watch, letting her enjoy a moment without his eyes trained to her. It gave them both a false grasp on plausible deniability. Like suddenly she just appeared there, without either one's consent.

There was one small, tense moment as she settled in and he still sat, arched and facing away. Then he swung into bed, one swift motion, like ripping off a bandaid, disturbing the still air. He sucked in a breath.

* * *

This had only happened a few times before.

Once, a few years ago after a nasty night – the anniversary of the day his parents died. He was crying so violently, so endlessly, that she stayed there all night, cradling him, wide-eyed awake, until she came to her senses and slipped out at dawn. She went home, changed clothes, and pretended it never happened. He pretended not to remember.

Once, a few nights after he told the world about his secret identity. Possibly the first night he'd slept since then. He was still recovering from injuries but he couldn't make himself face whatever monster that would take over when he managed to silence his own distracting technobabble. So she became the incentive.

Once, tonight. Because she'd relaxed enough to actually fall asleep there. Like it was normal. And because every time he came back beat up she was reminded of one dark, inevitable end. As unwilling as she was to break the elastic, almost invisible scrap of professionalism between them, she was even less willing to fail to take care of him. He meant too much.

He never asked for much on these nights. He didn't need a lullaby or to be the little spoon. Her presence was enough, apparently.

"Hey, Pep?"

Well, maybe not this time.

She rolled her eyes so forcefully it was almost painful. It was a shame he couldn't see how impressive her derision was in the dark. "What?"

"I was just thinking…" and then he rolled over to face her, blinding her with the arc. She reached out squinting and tugged the cover up over his chest. He didn't seem to notice. "If we were doing this for real…we could do this all the time. And it wouldn't be weird."

She didn't even know where to start with that.

"Doing what for real?"

"Being together. Instead of just pretending that we're not."

She gaped at him. "We _aren't_."

"Yes, we are. You take care of me. And I would take care of you, if you'd ever let me."

"Tony, I'm certain that you taking care of me in any normal capacity would be disastrous."

"I brought you soup that one time!" He always used the one time she'd gotten the flu as proof that he was good to her.

"Right, what a wonderful, devoted partner you are," she said, oozing sarcasm.

"I pay you."

"Required by law."

"Plus, you know, I also take care of you because—"

"_Don't say it—_"

"—I'm Iron Man."

"Oh, _god_."

"I protect the free world!"

"Okay, Tony," she patronized.

"I _do_!"

She swatted away one of his wildly gesticulating hands. "None of this proves your ridiculous claim."

He continued with the presentation of evidence. "We're together 24/7."

"You require constant supervision."

"I named a cactus after you." Also during the week she'd had the flu. Apparently he needed someone besides Jarvis to talk to.

"Once again, that's not flattering."

"It had a little purple flower," he grumbled, as though that justified it.

"I'm not _prickly_."

"I'm thinking if I tried to hug you you'd probably stab me, so—"

"_Why_ would you hug a cactus?"

"Because you're beautiful and I want to be with you."

That was the first time he had ever said something so direct about his feelings. It had always been "superheroes have girlfriends" and "if we did really did _this_ _thing_." They both were a little surprised the words fell out of his mouth. And that all she had to do was snark about a cactus to get him to talk about his feelings.

He broke the silence. "I'm just saying…you're in my bed."

Like she wasn't hyperaware of that fact. "Do you want me to leave?" she asked, almost too aggressive.

"No," he started. "It's just that the only person that's ever slept in this bed besides me is you. And there's a reason for that."

That was true. The bimbos got the guest room, presumably because of Tony's mild agoraphobia. Or maybe because of something else.

"Say something," he pushed.

"Roll over," she murmured.

"What?" He wasn't sure if he was about to be injured or all of his dreams were about to come true.

"On your back, Tony," she said, more clearly this time.

"Why?"

"Because you're leaning on your broken ribs; and, while I'm not a doctor, I'm pretty sure that's bad for them."

"Yes, ma'am," Tony grumbled, and did what she asked. He settled onto his back with a slight groan. That was going to hurt in the morning.

But she still hadn't responded.

She didn't know how. Concerning this particular issue, the only thing she knew how to do was silence herself. She'd had years of practice, and it was rote and automatic. The graceful and articulate Pepper Potts had no words to give him.

So instead, she scooted closer to settle into the crook of his neck and lay an arm over his torso. His hand went up automatically to clasp hers, like this was natural. He pressed a kiss to her hair and sighed.

"It's late," she breathed. "If you still want to talk about this in the morning, then we will. But for now, let's just sleep. Okay?"

This was some kind of step, he thought. Any other time before she would have brushed him off with some cleverly designed quip. And she definitely wouldn't still be lying there with him. This was something, at least.

"Shake on it," he said.

Again, her eye-rolling prowess was wasted on him. But she obliged, their clasped hands going from holding each other to shaking, very businesslike, and then back again.

She settled into him, letting the silence cocoon them. JARVIS would wake them up in less than three hours, but she was quite content not to think about that. She could feel his breathing and it was so _satisfying_. Every in and out rhythmically making her feel stronger, making him seem safer as he drifted off. As she drifted off too…

* * *

Completely defying logic, Tony woke up first. He looked down to see Pepper's lips pressed against his shoulder, sound asleep. A long kiss.

It was enough. For now.


End file.
